


Life Cycles

by LittleRaven



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Beauty and the Beast Fusion, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Curse Breaking, Curses, F/M, Fairy Tale Curses, Fairy Tale Retellings, Marrying for a prophecy, Prophecy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-24 19:41:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20019955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/pseuds/LittleRaven
Summary: She’d never believed in curses, even as a girl.





	Life Cycles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raktajinos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raktajinos/gifts).



She’d written off marriage a long time ago, when her father had left them destitute, with no land or titles, to work the land or find employ in town as they could. What suitors she had known vanished with him, and that had been years ago, when she’d still been the right age for young woman to marry. She wasn’t expecting her future to be a great loss now. She looked back out the window, to the overgrown gardens outside it and the bridge over the stream beyond. Her mother would have an easier time if she only had Dawn to care for, and she couldn’t let either of them pay the price for a simple flower. 

She had asked for a rose. There would be roses aplenty here. 

Surviving to enjoy them would be the challenge. 

Buffy looked back at the creature before her, the cats’ eyes very like those she imagined a lion would have—was she remembering an illustration from an old story, the books she’d looked at in her father’s library for the sole reason that he’d forbade her?--the fangs protruding, yellow as the eyes, the unkempt state of what features passed for those of a man. His long dark hair was as dirty as his worn clothes, his mansion; how long had he been decaying with it? She quavered. This was no home, no fate suitable for a lady. 

She was no longer a lady. Her shoulders straightened, and she faced the inhuman eyes. There was no tremor in her voice when she spoke. “I accept the bargain.” 

The creature held out an arm. Making the decision at the same time as her body reacted, she put her hand on it. He stared, as if he was as surprised at she was at her response to his gesture. Emboldened, she didn’t drop her gaze. 

He was, Buffy discovered throughout her days there, nocturnal. She never saw, nor heard, him moving about when she woke. The halls were hers to roam, for the most part. 

Upon first realizing this, she was grateful. She had slept in the dust, refusing the bed of the room he’d led her to, after hours of waiting for him to appear again, and then hours of fearing what he would have in store for her in the morning. She had no wish to see him, to actually spend time in a room with the creature she’d sacrificed herself to, and it felt like a gift that he seemed to share her feelings, at least during the day.

At night, however, he would not be so generous. Wherever she was, whether investigating the house, trying to clean up the parts of it she lived in, or outdoors, he found her. As soon as the sun had set, he was there, watching. Unable to stand motionless under his gaze, which she could not read, Buffy would go up to him. As they did that first night, he would offer his arm, she would give him her hand, and he led her away. Buffy soon noted that he had become cleaner, though his clothes remained worn-looking and old. 

She wondered, more than once, if he never thought she would escape. If she couldn’t just slip away at dawn and be far from this place. It wouldn’t be easy, her family uprooted again—she couldn’t let them stay, with that creature and his fangs in the night so near—but they’d done it once. How much worse could it be the second time? There were moments in which she thought maybe that was the idea: to let her think she could leave, and then hunt her and her mother and sister, all of them at once. 

If that were to be the case, she decided, then he would really be getting tired of waiting. Perhaps he’d eat her soon. After a time, when neither happened, Buffy returned to her original question. Why was he allowing her to move about? Why did he not seize her and shut her in her room before morning, if her stay had been the only condition under which he would let her mother leave? Why bother with leading her around as if he were a gentleman and she a lady, when he could just drag her off wherever it pleased him? As if she had a choice. 

The thought clung to her like a stubborn cobweb. She’d had no choice. Not a real one, not if she were to keep her morality and do her familial duty. He had no right to behave as if she did. She felt mocked, as if he were trying to get her to play pretend, knowing the reality of the situation and that she could only do what was asked of her. Live with him, come to him. She wore the tattered remnants of clothes belonging to whichever lady had lived here before, when the mansion was thriving, and in the cracked mirror she used, she saw not the noblewoman who’d let suitors beg for attention, or the impoverished gentlewoman trying to make a living through selling her sewing, but a ghost. Her skin was paling again, as it had been during her youth, and the fabric of her dresses was soft, musty. She could smell the death on her, now. She wore it even among the flowers. 

Every night he came for her, and she would accompany him to what looked to be the dining room. He would sit at the other end of the long table and watch as she ate the meal she’d gathered out of his gardens. He never ate or drank himself. Sometimes he would speak, compliment her choice of dress, answer her questions about the house, how she was to live in it, as if her welfare concerned him. He would not answer if she asked him why it had been abandoned, or why he was still there. He would go silent, and on the first of these occasions, she had thought that he might leave or, hand clenching on the knife she’d been willing to let near food, that she would need to be ready for an attack. The silence continued instead, then and every other time she persisted in asking; she chose to move on to other topics of conversation, resolving thereafter to investigate the mystery without help, to deduce answers from what clues she could find in the house. 

She’d never believed in curses, even as a girl, but here was a demon whose eyes never seemed to leave her as soon as dusk set in. She wondered if whatever magic had gone into creating him, into maintaining him in this space, separate from all society, was working itself into her, drawing her in, until the world she’d left was a faded dream in her mind, just as this place was a faded version of itself. Perhaps that was what had happened to him, she thought when this crossed her mind one evening. Perhaps he had wandered in here, or he too had been forced to make a choice, and this place caught him in a trap he could not escape. Who would have done it to him? The thin press of the fabric against her body felt heavy. What had happened to the woman who wore it? Would he disappear too one day, leave her alone in the mansion, waiting for a traveler or an end that might never come? 

Her stomach clenched. She dropped her knife on the table. Buffy stood with what composure she could summon; it all disappeared as soon as he asked her why. He had questions? He wanted her to respond as if he would take care of her? He had taken her away, and his heart was too dead to feel what he had done. Her voice hoarse from the rage she still bit back, she turned and fled to her room. He had yet to ever follow her inside. She hoped this would remain true. Her heart sped up as she heard his footsteps stop outside her door. She tried to silence her ragged breathing, as if she could make him think she wasn’t there if he couldn’t hear her. He left, but her body let her sleep it was in fits and starts. 

She left the following morning. 

It was day, but the woods were dark, as if they sought to supply the barriers he had not. Buffy gritted her teeth and crossed the bridge over the stream, that much closer to home. She would see this through to the other side, just as when she’d made her way to him. He would wake to find her gone. She would make him see. He could not keep her. She would not be like him. 

Her family welcomed her back, if not without some trepidation. She was made aware, again, of her pallor, her ruined finery. It was not hers, she decided, not anymore. She cast it off, burned it, though the threads could serve another purpose: the fabric remade into handkerchiefs, scarves, something of this world. She would not have the reminder, and her family was glad of it. So she settled back down into life, working—that much seemed to be true no matter where she went. It seemed odd to the townspeople, she knew, to have a daughter disappear and return, whatever story her mother had told them. She would need to get them used to her again. She went out with her sister, spoke when it was appropriate, tended their house, spent her days like a proper unmarried daughter. 

The nights she spent dreaming. She was at the mansion again, standing on the grounds. The wild roses filled her nose, followed by the softer scent of the ruined house. The gardens were empty. Buffy knew he was still there. In her dreams, she followed him through the empty rooms, watched him as he moved less and less. One night, he stopped. She watched him leave the house, sit on the ground, lean against a rosebush and not move at all, despite the thorns. His eyes closed, and remained so. 

In the hours before dawn, she dressed, cast a look towards her sleeping sister, and stroked the dark brown hair. Then she left the house. 

The forest seemed to part for her. There was no light, and yet it was easy to make it through to the bridge, and the other side of the stream. She swept across it to the gardens beyond, the rose-smell drawing her in. When she found him, he was dead. He did not breathe; his heart did not beat. Yet he opened his eyes, and he looked at her. 

“When I came here, I was cursed. To be free of the curse, was to pass it on. Someone had to share it. That was the prophecy which bound me to demand your stay, and you almost avoided it. Why did you come back?”

Why hadn’t she left him to suffer? 

Speaking, she found an answer. 

“To share it.”

He would be alone here, until he wasn’t there at all, or perhaps some other would pass by. She could not allow either. 

“What if there’s more than one way to fulfill a prophecy?” She continued, letting the words bring her courage. “A curse is unholy. Marriage is sacred.”

Her hand rested on his cheek, then. “I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. But maybe we can start.” No stranger than a daughter coming and going alone. Perhaps they’d find their way out into a life. Perhaps not. For now, it would keep the dead at bay. 

Under her skin, his face changed. His eyes darkened into brown. His hand came up to rest on her own.


End file.
